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He pulls down one of my straps, slides his other hand in among the feathers, but it’s no good, I lie there like a dead bird. He is not a monster, I think. I can’t afford pride or aversion, there are all kinds of things that have to be discarded, under the circumstances. “Maybe I should turn the lights out,” says the Commander, dismayed and no doubt disappointed. I see him for a moment before he does this. Without his uniform he looks smaller, older, like something being dried. The trouble is that I can’t be, with him, any different from the way I usually am with him. Usually I’m inert. Surely there must be something here for us, other than this futility and bathos.
